Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 07.djvu/130

* ENGLISH LITERATURE. 108 ENGLISH LITERATURE. expression than many a lesser man. It is not the mighty rook that rears its sturdy shoulders out of the' torrent to which we look for indications of the direction and force of the current. In fact, though in a sense the crowning glory of English literature, lie belongs not so much to it as to the whole world. He "may of course be considered in part as a product" of the conditions which affected the general literal;,' growth; but when we stop to consider the other dramatists of his aire we shall be struck by the difference more in kind than in degree between him and them; in the bold hyperbole with which Swinburne closes his sonnet," "All stars are angels, but the sun is The one of his contemporaries who comes near- .-i in him in rank. Ben .Jonson, is also, it so happens, the one whose characteristics are the most instructive for the purposes of a philosophic contrast of tendencies. While the old theory of a personal envy of his master on Jonson's part is now discredited, the fact remains that he repre- sents two points of view diametrically opposite to Shakespeare's. Almost alone in an age of far- going romanticism, he stood unflinchingly for the classical ideals in the drama — for the enforce- ment of the unities from which Shakespeare had 1. as will a- for wider and happier applica- nt what we call the classical tradition, for the calm, ordered -unity of that school in an age when the riot of imaginative license ran un- checked. While the struggle seemed fruitless at the time, his attitude was not without its re- sults. Ill" -red slumbered in the ground for a while: but in the end it sprang up and brought forth fruit in the fully developed classicism of Dryden and Pope. The other point of contrast - the never-ending controversy between realism and idealism. The former, for our pur- i i;i be taken to mean the kind of por- traiture which i- seize with fidelity the external characteristics of a man or a woman, while the latter designates the spirit of penetrat- ing insight which goes far below the surfao the eternal verities of human nature — which sees men no! ,mh aa they appear, but as they are, and perhaps even more as they may be. This he spirit of Shake peat e, and it is In rgely ise of his possession of this insight that he hold- to tbi- day lu- mastery over the world, while Jonson i- nail mih by student- of litera- ture. In his own day Jonson was far more popu- lar than tbi' Bupreme dramatist; his faculty of hitting off to the life the little foibles and fash ion- ,,f hi, generation, of painting (in his own 'everj man in his humor,' appealed to an •<. in. could recogni: e each deta il as part. .1 ilir dailj life of their own circle; but when 1 1 mil had |'.i--i d a wu . and new man- id ci in with another, these old-fash- ioned humor- roused no more than the evanescent I with which to-day we regard the faded ur grandfathers, Jo 'ireit influence upon hi- age was found in i lyric- which served o - model - for the I- h i domestication in Eng- [l ( tom US possible. • If tl Her I in dramati 1 : '. oluf ion and line of the drama iii Eng bind has been treated elsewhere; bui a few mem orable names, al which the world would have roarveli n I bee isi be chronicled. Dekker's real if disorderly genius, Heywood's simple and touching portraiture or domestic life, are worth a word. The 'tragedy of blood' which, repellent as it is to modern taste, answered the cry of the time for intensity at any cost, was inaugurated by Kyd's Spanish Tragedy ; Marlowe and even Shakespeare touched it in pass- ing; and two really fine poets, .Middleton and Webster, signalized themselves in this style, the Inter devoting his magnificent power of expres- sion almost exclusively to these horrors. Beau- mont and Fletcher can scarcely be named apart, though long and patient study has led modern critics to the conclusion that Beau- mont contributed to their partnership the greater depth of thought and constructive power, while his older fellow furnished lyric grace, sentiment, and smooth-flowing diction. Massinger, a Puri- tan at heart., is at his best when he treats some theme of unworldly idealism. Ford, on the other hand, shows his decadent spirit by his morbid quest of the abnormal in character and situation. Shirley, an imitator in tragedy, is a precursor in the opposite style, writing in the exact manner of the light, graceful trifling of the Restoration comedy. The greatest prose writer of the early seven- teenth century is a man whose services to science, elsewhere dealt with, are even more commanding and universally recognized. Just as Bacon saw the need of an entire reversal of the old scientific methods before modern science had realized the task before it. so he struck out for himself a way of writing English which anticipated the results of another century of thought on the matter. He had no confidence in the vulgar tongue, and refused to intrust to it his scientific speculations; but when he had occasion to use it. when his Essays began to grow under his hand from mere jottings in his note-book into their rounded and satisfying form, he set to work to shape an in -i rument that should be adequate to his purpose. Saturated as he was with Latin, and going to that language very much for his vocabulary, he saw that it was impossible to write one language by the rules of another, and developed an English kind of sentence, compact, brief, and manageable, in strong contrast to the long, rambling periods of his contemporaries. But prose was not long in developing into something more than a mere convenient instrument. Two writers who were boy- at Bacon's death carried it to a pitch of Sublimity and impressiveness which, amid varied modern excellences, has scarcely been surpassed. Uneven, to be -ore. sometimes almost too rich, Jeremy Taylor and Sir Thomas Browne at their best will always give delight. They, far more typical of their age than Bacon, and another man even more typical than thev, represent its overshadowing melancholy and its tendency to imaginative contemplation rather than to abstract thinking. Bonne is the best rep- resentative in these points, as in the suddenness with which he "passes from moods of earthly passion to moods of religious ecstasy." As often happen-, it was not bis strength, but his weak- ness, that found imitators and created a school; his love of 'conceits, 1 recondite and too subtle analogies and metaphors, which Marini and Con ft were at the same time making the fashion on the Pont incut, affected a number of the young er poets, of whom George Herbert. Crashaw, and Vaughan 'the Silmi-t' were the most notable;